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THE LONG COUNT
During the 1974 annual audit of Dean
Witter & Co., second largest of the Firm's
brokerage clients, the San Francisco
office found a way to make meaningful,
challenging work out of a tedious chore —
sorting 200,000 cards into good customer
confirmations and customer exceptions.
The confirmations are IBM cards sent
to each Dean Witter customer to ascertain
whether his account balances are correct.
The cards are considered good if they
are returned signed and in acceptable
shape (not folded, spindled or mutilated),
while the exceptions are those cards that
have a letter attached, are not signed or
are otherwise unsuitable for processing
by computer.
The San Francisco Dean Witter audit
team, which numbers over thirty, included
Dennis Wu, the manager in charge of the
engagement; John Trewin who supervised
the Operations Section of the audit; and
Bob Archibald, Margot Fourie, Brent
Thomas and Guy Woelk who worked on
customers' confirmations. "We couldn't
change the nature of the work," Guy said.
"But by giving the work to those who
would be challenged by it, our office
achieved a trouble-free confirmations
operation and a social good."
The people engaged to sort customer
confirmations are employees of the
Disabled Employees' Rehabilitation
Center, a unique San Francisco organiza­tion
providing mentally disabled persons
with an opportunity for meaningful
work. All of the Center's employees,
classified by the state as untrainable, have
been denied rehabilitation services by
public agencies. The Center is the
lifework of Ming Chun, a man totally
dedicated to helping the disabled, to
giving them a chance to work and main­tain
their self-respect.
Because the Center is self-supporting,
its success depends on the ability of
Mr. Ming and his volunteer assistants to
obtain enough work of the kind his
employees can handle. This includes
simple tasks like sorting, filling small bags
with toys and packaging cocktail napkins.
In search of new avenues for the Center's
employees, Mrs. Mae Wu, a volunteer at
the center and mother of manager Dennis
Wu, asked her son if Haskins & Sells
might be able to offer assistance.
"Processing customer confirmations
has always been a staggering job on past
brokerage audits because of the volume
of cards and the tedious nature of the
work," Dennis says. "We needed people
who could sort the cards, putting the
good ones aside and separating the
mutilated ones from those with attach­ments.
I thought the employees of the
Center, given adequate supervision,
could successfully handle the job."
After some research into the Center, a
tour of the plant and a look at the work
being done there, Dennis decided to
give the organization a try. He was
encouraged by Robert Hall, Dean Witter's
vice president in charge of Western
Operations.
Work began in September with the
typical slight misgivings that attend any
new venture. These were quickly dis­pelled,
however, by the dedication of the
Center's employees. They worried con­stantly
about the quality of their work,
and were quick to turn to the supervising
staff accountants for help whenever
confronted by an unusual confirmation
card. At the height of the "confirmation
crunch," eight Center employees sorted
nearly twenty thousand cards daily, and
did it with very few mistakes. "That kind
of performance is always noteworthy;
from the mentally disabled it is truly
remarkable," Guy Woelk says.
The members of the audit team agree
that the experiment turned out well and,
along with the San Francisco office and
Dean Witter, congratulate the people of
the Disabled Employees' Rehabilitation
Center on a job well done. O